I’m starting an internship in New York this summer. While I feel excited about this new opportunity and experience, I have also never felt more uneasy before. I’m a four-foot-eleven woman going into the big city by myself every day. I’ll be taking public transport during rush hour and will be meeting all types of people. As someone who has never traveled anywhere by herself, I felt like the protection of the pepper spray bottle that my parents bought from CVS would not be enough to ease my mind from the stresses and worries about this day-to-day commute.
I first learned about the self-defense program my university offers last year, during one of my Her Campus weekly meetings, where the officer who runs the program (Officer Cheney) came in person to spread the word. At the time, it seemed like a fun experience to have and made me excited to try it the following semester. When I ended up getting my internship, I felt an even larger pull to take the class, in the hopes that learning how to defend myself in worst-case scenario situations would give me ease of mind as I embark on my journey to the Big Apple.
The Realistic Nature of the Program
An aspect of the program that I appreciated beyond words was the various situations that the officers put us through to make us feel prepared. Rather than sugar-coating the kinds of situations that we may face as women in this world, they instead put us in situations that felt real and felt truthful. More than anything, this ability to face realistic situations using the different self-defense techniques we were learning in the class gave me more confidence than anything else. I felt like I could face any situation if I was able to get out of the situations that the officers put me in, even if they were staged/simulated.
Looking back on the program, the realistic situations the officers put each of us through (especially in the fourth simulation class) helped to teach me how to adapt and respond to different violent situations. While these events will hopefully never actually occur in the real world, they made me feel ready for if there were to be any kind of violent attack that I would need to face during my commute to New York, or at any point in my life. I felt ready, prepared, and more than anything, confident in the skills that I knew.
Falling Back On My Training Rather Than Stepping Up to the Challenge
In every class, Officer Cheney emphasized that it’s always better to be able to fall back on the training that we have rather than stepping up to the challenge if an uncomfortable or violent encounter were to take place. We kept repeating the skills we learned in previous classes. We would never leave a skill after learning it once. These repetitions started making the various strikes easier to remember and do. The strikes that I was doing felt natural and felt more like instinct rather than something I had to really think about prior. Violent encounters can often happen so quickly that as a victim of the encounter, you may not have time to think about the moves you need to do to get yourself out and to escape (which is one of two goals when put in an uncomfortable situation). While you do want to reassess the situation, having these skills as muscle memory gives me more confidence if I were to find myself in any tricky situations.
My Voice and Mind Pack a Powerful Punch
“NO!”
Before taking this course, I didn’t realize how my voice could provide as much of an impact as any strike we learned could. In fact, using your voice may be the most powerful part of getting yourself out of an attack. Not only does it alert people around you that you are in a dangerous situation, but it also makes you as a woman feel powerful in the situation and feel like you have the upper hand. Each time we learned a new strike, we would yell the word “NO!” While this is the smallest of the plethora of words that could be yelled, even a simple “NO” adds a significant punch. It makes you feel strong and in control, which is how we want to feel if we are put in a dangerous situation. Moreover, our mind is an equally important tool that can be used. Being resourceful and thoughtful in the kinds of strikes we use and the techniques that we have at our disposal is already half of the battle. Our mind is one of the most important tools, and it is important for us women to use our minds to achieve our main task: escape safely.
Taking this program was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It offered a welcoming environment to learn and to grow as a woman living on a college campus, and beyond. I learned to be confident, strong, and to stand up for myself and my well-being. I learned that saying “NO” means “NO,” and that I should never convince myself differently. I would recommend that all women take this class. Even if you are not traveling by yourself at any point in the near future, learning how to defend ourselves in a world filled with uncertainty is a useful tool at any point in our life. And if these are not good enough reasons to take the class, just know that you will be able to spend 12 full hours (over four weeks) with our loveable campus dog Tildy. Isn’t that reason enough?